In the year 3012, the city of London could be halfway underwater—or at least that’s what artist Michael Pinsky is hoping to depict in his latest art exhibit.

To illustrate the extreme impact of climate change, Pinsky’s Plunge installation marks the predicted sea levels of the future on three monuments across London. For the next month, a string of low energy blue LED lights will hang 28 meters (90 feet) above the ground on each column, showing Londoners just how high sea levels could rise 1,000 years from now.

While it’s difficult to predict exactly how high sea levels will be so far in the future, a height of 28 meters was chosen as a dramatic, and hopefully influential, example.

“A height of 28 metres above current sea level was chosen for Plunge as an extreme illustration of what could happen if we continue with a ‘business as usual’ emission scenario (without changing anything we do today),” Plunge’s website says.

The lights can be seen on the Seven Dials Sundial Pillar, the Duke of York Column and the Paternoster Square Column outside St. Paul’s Cathedral and will be up until March 4, 2012.

Contributing Editor
Sarah Korones is a freelance writer based in New York. She has written for Psychology Today and Boston's Weekly Dig. She holds a degree from Tufts University.
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